A couple days ago, I was compelled to wear a skirt. It was my turn to be a lector at church (read prayers, announcements and passages from the Bible), and jeans, my normal standby, were not allowed.

Determined to look respectable, I also donned a pair of heels that my mom picked out and a semi-matching shirt. I brushed my teeth, washed my face and came off not looking too bad, considering my 10 minutes of prep time.

I read my lines with minimal errors, and as I stepped down from the podium, I was feeling pretty good. Until I heard my mom, that is.
“Can you try to walk like a girl?” my mom inquired in frustration. Startled, I wondered what I had done wrong. I thought I walked just the same as anybody.

I had a Serious Reflection the other day, and I determined that there are a lot of things I just don’t like.

At the top of the list, of course, is yoga, but please pretend like I didn’t say that because I’ll admit it – those yoga people are frightening. I do not want to incur their wrath once more.

After yoga would be communists, bathrooms without soap and overripe bananas.

But despite all the pitfalls of existence, many great things exist in our beautiful world, and I view it as my duty to honor them.

So honor them I will, much like exemplary students are honored by being tortured with a boring assembly, except my speech will be more bearable because it will be shorter. And you can always click the little “X” on this page and close it if you want to. I won’t even notice! You can’t start clicking on the school principal or else you might find yourself in a few legal entanglements.

Dear Big Black Safety Scissors,

You tempt me. You always tempt me. I’ll be sitting in my room, minding my own business, marveling at the awesomeness of inverse trigonometric functions, and you’ll stare at me from across the room with those beady little eyes of yours. You look harmless, but only I know the truth – you are the very definition of evil.

You’ve even preyed upon small children, like my cousin and I when we were toddlers. There we were, sitting in the back room of our grandma and grandpa’s house like perfect angel children, and you said to my cousin, “Hey there, little fella! Now doesn’t that freshly grown long hair of your cousin’s look awfully tempting?” And like an innocent little 4-year-old boy, of course he agreed. “Why, yes, it does!” he admitted, and proceeded to give me a first-rate trim.

Editor's note: This is the latest installment of "Tarahfying Thoughts," a column by Read This! writer Tarah Knaresboro. Watch for this column on the second Tuesday of every month.

There is an art to getting lost. And forgive me for sounding self-indulgent, but I think I have mastered it.

Over the years, I have come to terms with the inevitable –- when I try to go somewhere (usually only the first 10 to 15 times), I get lost along the way. It’s like the world is a maze, and I am a hungry Pac-Man. Or Pac-Woman, as the case may be.

I’ve become so used to getting lost (and have received such high scores in AP Getting Lost as well as the Get Lost SAT II), that I am now ready to pass on my grand skills to those with less experience. Just follow my simple rules, and you are on your way to Eternal Bliss. Let’s just hope Eternal Bliss has lots of large road signs directing you to it.